Tiny Islands That You’ll Never Visit: Snake Island, Brazil

Off the coast of Brazil sits Ilha de Queimada Grande, or as it’s known in colloquial English, Snake Island. Comprising roughly 110 acres of trees, the island is uninhabited and travel to it is expressly forbidden by the Brazilian navy. Why? Because Queimada Grande is home to hundreds of thousands of golden lanceheads, the snake pictured above.

Unique to Queimada Grande, the golden lancehead typically grows to be about two feet long but at times can grow to nearly double that length. And its venom is poisonous. Very, very poisonous.

Generally, lanceheads are responsible for 90% of snake bite-related fatalities in Brazil. The mortality rate from a lancehead bite is 7% if the wound goes untreated — and as high as 3% even if treatment is given. The venom causes a grab bag of symptoms which includes kidney failure, necrosis of muscular tissue, brain hemorrhaging, and intestinal bleeding. Scary stuff, to be sure.

For Snake Island, the picture is even scarier. The data above does not include bites from the golden lancehead, as there are no official records of a golden lancehead-caused fatality due to the de facto quarantine on the Brazilian island. A chemical analysis of golden lancehead venom suggests that the snake is much more dangerous than its continental cousins: golden lancehead viper venom is faster acting and more powerful — perhaps five times more powerful.

Two foot-long snakes with such powerful venom, combined, means that getting close to one carries with it a high risk of death. And getting close to one is all but certain on Snake Island. Even the most conservative estimate suggests that the golden lancehead population density on Queimada Grande is one per square meter; others suggest a population as high as five per square meter. Regardless, as one site points out, even at the lower estimate, “you’re never more than three feet away from death.”